Search This Blog

I can see it now. In the wake of a string of natural disasters and skyrocketing food prices in the Developing World, management at UN World Food Programme (WFP) decide to commence some serious marketing. So they start taking meetings with fancy ad agencies.

Here’s how the successful meeting went:

The senior manager at the agency turned on the charm and created a “reality distortion field” before turning the time over to the creative director, who immediately started to weave a persuasive narrative. “We’ll put actresses like Rachel Weisz and Drew Barrymore in PSAs, in print ads and on Oprah. Imagine stark, beautifully-shot images of Drew feeding darling doe-eyed kids in Kenya in haunting black and white. The images will underscore that issue of hunger in the Developing World is black and white…”

At that point the UN World Food Programme managers should have kicked that agency to the curb.

Unless your cause is the Ansel Adams Black and White Photo Preservation Trust (I just made that up, by the way) your fundraising and cause-related marketing images better be in color. In every test of preferences (outside of the canyons of Manhattan), people say they want to see color images.

The only people that don’t prefer color are me and artsy-fartsy creative directors who can’t set aside their own creative biases long enough to think about what the intended audiences favor.

That isn’t the only problem with this ad from the May 19, 2008 issue of Time magazine.

The agency tried to make up for the lack of color in the photo by adding the red cup. But the red cup is a marketing conceit. The cups the WFP feeds people with aren’t red. Neither is the food the WFP distributes. The WFP doesn’t pass around a red cup when it’s fundraising. Donors don’t get a red cup as a premium when they make some kind of donation.

The red cup is, in the main, a way to introduce color into a campaign that should have had it from the start.

Labels

Comments

John Lepp said…

Interesting post Alden. I would like to offer a alternative point of view. Yes, this is coming from another creative director - This "artsy" visual quickly communicates that Drew Barrymore through her support is a part of helping feed children every day. The black and white/sepia image puts everyone on a even keel - we are all in this together... This type of design approach also will help separate this ad from the other 45 pages of full colour ads that would quickly get glanced over. The red cup joins the two sides together - as well as draws your focus into the image and makes you look closely at the image. It also works well with the red headline and logo for the campaign. In fact, my only critique is that is alienates potential donors by not including them.

My comment isn't so much about the advert (I'm sure Drew thought she was doing the right thing), it's more about the actual photograph, which I think is so contrived it makes me shudder.

I spend alot of time out in townships in South Africa, and I can honestly say that when you take children food they don't form a orderly queue. If anything each visit tends to resemble organised chaos.

And, if the children see my camera they push each other out of the way in order to get their photo taken and afterwards they all want to see themselves... well, at least that's the ones that don't think having your photo taken steals your soul.

It's photos like these that give the unsuspecting public a false and 'romantic' image of feeding an African child.

I'm not saying its not rewarding - I love it - it's just that this image so SO false. It doesn't even look urgent. Think about it: If you're absolutely starving would you wait patiently while the next guy gets food before you? No, you'd wonder where your share is and you'd do anything to get it... it's called human nature.

Popular posts from this blog

I’ve spent a big chunk of my career working with or for charities.
Many of my dearest and ablest friends are in the charity ‘space.’ And the
creativity and problem-solving coming out of the nonprofit sector has never
been greater. Although I’ve had numerous nonprofit clients over the last decade
or so, I haven’t worked in a charity for about 12 years now, which gives me a
certain distance. Distance lends perspective and consequently, I get a lot of
people asking me which charities I recommend for donations of money or time. My usual answer is, “it depends.” “On what?” they respond. “On what you want from your charitable activities,” I reply. It sounds like a weaselly consultant kind of an answer, but bear
with me for a moment. The English word charity comes from the Latin word caritas and means “from the heart,”
implying a voluntary act. Caritas is the same root word for cherish. The Jews come at charity from a different direction. The Hebrew
word that is usually rendered as charity is t…

More cause-related marketing campaigns are unveiled every day across the world than I review in a year at the cause-related marketing blog. And, frankly, I don’t see very many campaigns from outside North America. So I won’t pretend that my annual list of the top cause-related marketing campaigns is exhaustive.

But, like any other self-respecting blogger, I won’t let my superficial purview stop me from drawing my own tortured conclusions!

So… cue the drumroll (and the dismissive snickers)… without further ado, here is my list of the eight best cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007.

My list of the worst cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007 follows on Thursday.

Chilis and St. Jude Children’s Research HospitalI was delighted by the scope of Chilis’ campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. As you walked in you saw the servers adorned in black co-branded shirts. Other elements included message points on the Chilis beverage coas…

Last Monday, July 22, 2013, March of Dimes released the annual results of its campaign with Kmart... now in its thirtieth year... and thereby begged the question, what does it takes to have a multi-decade cause marketing relationship between a cause and a sponsor?

In the most recent year, Kmart,the discount retailer, donated $7.4 million to the March of Dimes, bringing the 30-year total to nearly $114 million. March of Dimes works to improve the health of mothers and babies.

Too many cause marketing relationships, in my estimation, resemble speed-dating more than long-term marriage. There can be good reasons for short-term cause marketing relationships. But most causes and sponsors benefit more from long-term marriages than short-term hookups, the main benefit being continuity. Cause marketing trades on the trust that people, usually consumers, put in the cause and the sponsor. The longer the relationship lasts the more trust is evidenced.